Welcome to the Fishing Report. It is a beautiful sunny day in Townsend, Tennessee. I was out in the woods early listening to the song birds. It seems like the older I get the more I appreciate the simple pleasures. Listening to the woods is one of them. Stream watching is another. I stopped at the swinging bridge on my way to work. A couple from Ohio were standing on those huge boulders fishing for trout with night crawlers. We talked a while, I took the water temperature and left.

The water is 64 degrees this morning in town. It will be cooler higher in the mountains. It is going to be warm this week and we have a chance for rain every day. We don’t have a great chance but it still exists. My plan is to go fishing Friday with Paula. We hope to float the lower Little River in a canoe and fish for smallmouth bass.

Fishing is excellent wherever you go. Some of the tailwater stories are amazing. Here, you are going to do better early in the morning and late in the evening. You can catch some trout during the day but evenings, for the last couple of hours will be prime time.

I would use Yellow Sally or Light Cahill patterns for a dry fly. Pheasant Tails, Green Weenies and Tellico Nymphs should work. Ants and beetles are a good idea too.

Downstream I hear the smallmouth are taking poppers. I can’t seem to verify that due to high muddy water. We tried to fish down there last week on two separate days but we were weathered out.

I bet popper fishing has picked up on the lakes due to the warmer water. We have so many lakes around here and evenings spent casting poppers to the banks can yield some great bluegill and bass fishing. Our boat should be in around July 1st so we’ll find out then. I guess we could fish the lakes in the canoe or our kayaks.

Business at the shop was a little slow the first week of June. I don’t know why. Last year that week was excellent. And another strange thing is happening. We are getting a lot of online orders from New York. Daniel told me it is so out of the ordinary that a big shop up there might have closed. I got online and looked but didn’t find anything.

Here is another possibility, one bad employee can ruin a fly shop by making people mad in a short period of time. And, by the time the owner finds out, it’s too late. I’ve seen it happen, it happened to us years ago. One person with an ego problem and an attitude can ruin a store. If you own a fly shop and you suspect that might be happening to you, fire them. Don’t wait, walk down there right now and tell them to get out. I know from experience. I don’t have to worry about that. We have a top notch and very friendly crew. They are nice people who care about others.

We don’t hire anyone who has not been a customer for a long time and being friendly and helpful weighs more on our decision than anything else. We don’t advertise to hire staff. We would not consider hiring a stranger. We don’t hire anyone who approaches us, we approach them. That way, we get who we want and don’t make someone mad when we don’t hire them. Of course, we have not hired many people lately. I think the last one was David Knapp last year. He worked for us while he was off for the summer from college. But, we approached him.

Fly shops are fragile but customers are loyal until you make them mad. So we do everything we can to make sure that does not happen. We don’t want to make anyone mad. We want you to be happy.

I know I’m happy to be here today, doing my job and enjoying every minute of it.